Organizations today use conferencing and collaboration solutions to hold meetings with several parties in multiple geographic locations. Features typical of these conferencing and collaboration solutions include the ability to schedule a conference with both internal and external parties. These conferences use audio and video conferencing, text chat, application sharing and remote desktop sharing via an Internet connection. Audio conference bridge capabilities are provided with control over individual callers. Conference and collaboration solutions allow the sharing of a presentation with remote parties, sharing the display of a specific application with remotes parties and sharing a desktop display with remote parties.
White-boarding capabilities with conference and collaboration solutions allow participants to annotate documents being shared with participants, for example, slides and text documents. These solutions also allow the conference moderator to pass control of the presentation such that the remote party that has gained control can direct what is being displayed to all conference participants. Private chats between conference attendees are available and the ability to see who has joined the conference and who is currently speaking is provided by these solutions. Conference and collaboration solutions poll conferencing participants to solicit feedback as well as provide recording capabilities.
Within conference and collaboration solutions, a moderator starts a meeting by arriving at the meeting room at the scheduled time and finding the number within their email or calendar application that needs to be dialed to access the audio conference bridge. The moderator then manually dials the number on the conference phone in the room. Once the audio conference bridge solution answers the call, the moderator manually enters their conference identification number and passcode using the conference phone dial pad. A projector or monitor video cable available in the room is plugged into their laptop such that they can display the presentation material to the in-room participants.
The moderator then logs into their laptop and accesses the collaboration session by either launching the application on their computer or by logging into the service website. Once in the conference and collaboration application or service, the moderator logs into the prescheduled meeting by entering their conference identification number and passcode. The moderator enables video conferencing with any external parties who are video conference enabled. Sometimes, this is a completely separate video conferencing system that has no integration with the conference and collaboration application. The presentation material is opened to be shared with internal and external participants and is then shared with external participants via a menu item.
As shown, this type of conferencing and collaboration solution initiating a conference is manually intensive and time consuming. With these separate solutions, the typical conference room meeting that includes outside parties involves connecting a laptop to a projector through a local connection, accessing and opening the presentation material on the laptop and thereafter, getting it to display on the attached display device, which can include having to adjust display settings. During the meeting, the moderator also calls or answers external meeting participants who are dialing in for the meeting and then setting up a video conference with the external participants on the video conferencing system. This consumes time and effort before the meeting can be productive. This is compounded by the fact that meeting room users are infrequent users of the systems provided in the room and are therefore not proficient in the use of these systems.
A conferencing and collaboration system and methods thereof aimed at simplifying the initiation of a meeting in a conference room while reducing the time and effort required is therefore needed. These, as well as other related advantages and features, will be described in the present disclosure.